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Which makes it even more painful to see the eighteenth century building now closed, its ales in the cellar slowly edging towards their use-by date before they must must be poured away.

"We live here but the whole building has got no atmosphere, it's eerie. It's the quietness," Glynn said.

"The heart of the pub, the people aren't here. They are what make it."

Being self-employed, Glynn and Gemma are eligible for 80% of what they would usually earn as part of emergency government measures announced by Chanellor Rishi Sunak.

But since opening they have invested everything they have earned back into the business, which means there aren't any wages to go off.

Instead they have received a £10,000 grant to rely on, but there is no indication of how long the current lockdown will last - and whether any further support will become available for the hospitality industry as the last ones to re-open after restrictions lift.

Glynn and wife Gemma sold their house to buy the pub (Image: Adrian White)

Now only their family can enjoy it (Image: Adrian White)

Glynn said: "We sold our house in Ammanford to pay for the pub, everything we had and more went into buying this.

"Everything we earned went back into the business. It was part of the plan for three years to get the building up to standard.

"Business was picking up so we invested in some barns next to the pub which had planning permission.

"It was going really well. We had just been named one of the CAMRA pubs of the year, we had regular customers and new customers coming in."

With three children to keep entertained, Glynn and Gemma have no time to sit and dwell on the uncertainties they are facing.

They are also lucky to have the support of their community around them who have been regularly checking in to make sure they're okay.

But while there are some advantages - it's not often the family-of-five would usually be able to sit down for a meal together - it's hard to keep their thoughts away from the silent cellar below them.

There is no knowing how long pubs will have to stay shut (Image: Adrian White)

Glynn said: "It started when the Six Nations started getting cancelled and they are a big thing which help you through a quiet February. When you get to Super Saturday that one day lasts you for the month and then you get to Mothering Sunday.

"We had all that stock bought and paid for both those days and a lot of it has gone to waste. We deal with small breweries and I work two weeks in advance.

"Even though Super Saturday didn't happen we had 22 casks of real ale which will all be out of date in the next week. We have been pouring them away as they have come up to their dates.

"I have given a lot of pins away to elderly customers and the equipment to set up in their own homes, and we have given some away to customers and filled up plastic containers to take away. But you don't know which way to turn.

"We have been trying to keep ourselves busy, the whole restaurant wall has been stripped, the carpets have been shampooed, everything has been dusted and cleaned, the freezers defrosted. Everything we have been doing to keep occupied otherwise we would go crazy.

"You have to keep yourself upbeat, you have your family to keep yourself busy and getting down doesn't change the situation."

It will be a while until the regulars can return again (Image: Adrian White)

To keep busy, Glynn has been making sure he's in touch with his suppliers to get all the information he can, however limited. Hopefully it means the Mansel Arms will be raring to go when lockdown restrictions begin to ease.

He said: "I'm planning for when we are able to open. I'm trying to keep informed and speak to suppliers.

"When we open up we are not going to have any beer to sell. The concern is trying to get ahead to make sure that when we are allowed to open we are able to get our hands on it.

"Our grant should last until June, possibly July. What happens after June and July depends on if a second round of grants come around. Then you are depending on borrowing money, economic resilience funds which is something we don't want to get into.

"We don't know what will happen to the market. It will go one of two ways, either we'll get flooded with customers or there will still be worry about catching the virus, especially as a lot of our customers are older. Even if we open with social distancing measures in place it will be hard to manage that and enforce it.

For her, this is the most time she's ever had off, apart from when her children were born.

And now the novelty of catching up with the gardening and housework is over, she's worried about what the future holds.

"I enjoyed the first couple of weeks but I'm a bit anxious now," Nicola, 43, admits.

"I watch the news every afternoon and they're saying we will be the last to re-open.

"I've got a grant and I managed to pay my rent until the end of June and furlough my staff. But if this carries on for longer it's not going to last. I'm going to have to pay my next quarterly rent and how can I get that if we're not open?"

Inside the Traders' Tavern (Image: Richard Swingler)

Inside the Traders' Tavern (Image: Richard Swingler)

As one of Cardiff's few independent pubs left in the city centre, the Traders attracts customers from all walks of life.

And while it has its regulars, it also relies on those who pop in after one of the countless gigs going on down the road.

But that may all be a distant dream for the time being at least, after government chief medical officer Chris Whitty revealed social distancing may need to be in place for the rest of the year.

Nicola, who runs the pub with the help of her daughter Amy, said: "The whole point of a pub is to socialise.

"If it carries on for as long as they are saying I don't know how a lot of pubs will survive.

"I rely on the Motorpoint. If they turn around and say I can reopen in June but that concerts are not allowed I can manage without them but only manage. I'll just be able to pay the bills.

"I don't want to borrow any money. I just wish they would say there was a plan for the future for us if we can't re-open."

For Nicola, finding her way into the Traders Tavern came by chance after friends of hers already worked there.

But running a pub is not a new thing for her - her husband owns the Cons club on Habershon Street in Splott where she was a stewardess.

Between them they worry not only about the financial side of things but also the faces they no longer see.

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Nicola said: "We've been checking up on them. I've had some lovely messages from some of the boys. One of our regulars Rhys sent a picture the other day with his Traders hoodie on to say he misses us.

"I popped in to check up on it the other day and it's just not nice to see like this. It was quite sad to close the shutters.

"In the club we get a lot of older men and I feel for them as they rely on the club to have a chat and catch up with friends. It's hard to check on them as they're not all online."

Over on Church Street in the city centre, Bub's bar and kitchen is also locked down for the forseeable future.

Proudly independent of any chains or breweries, it took its owner Chris Rowlands around five years to set up after even longer working in other people's pubs to get there.

A few years down the line, he's since invested even more to finally get to the stage where he's finally happy.

In his words he's been left in limbo, and at this stage isn't sure whether Bub's will be in a place to open again when the situation changes if he doesn't get the government support he needs.

Chris Rowlands at Bub's (Image: Rob Browne /WalesOnline)

"Back when I was 19 or 20 years old if someone told me I could stay at home and still get paid 80% I would have thought that's fantastic," Chris, 38, jokes.

"It's not the stress of not going into work every day, if anything that's a bit of a holiday. But it's not knowing if we'll ever get to go back or we'll even open our doors again.

"The mental stress is quite horrific. If your place burned down in a fire you would know where you'd stand. It's black and white.

"Obviously it would stressful to see your business burned to the ground but you know what the next step would be."

Currently Chris is waiting to hear back after applying for a Welsh Government resilience fund to see what Bub's will be eligible for. But for every day that passes bills still need to be paid.

And while the craft ale pub contemplated deliveries, or Chris's 'Pub in a Box' idea complete with beer, pork scratchings and nuts, ultimately he took the decision not to go ahead as it would mean staff would not be able to receive furlough if the venture didn't pay off.

"Each week we are not open we are losing close to five figures in debt because of rent and bills that don't stop coming in," Chris said.

"We wanted to carry on doing deliveries, it was never going to make enough to keep us going but it was something for us so we're not just twiddling our thumbs.

"But if we were delivering and only making £50 a day it wouldn't be enough to pay the staff for their hours so we had to close down."

Today the bar is standing empty (Image: Rob Browne /WalesOnline)

(Image: Rob Browne /WalesOnline)

Chris added: "They say pubs and hospitality will be the last to open so what will happen then? They've got to keep us alive. It all comes back to the grant.

"From the point of the view of the government it's cheaper to keep us alive than see us go under. As a small business we put thousands into the local economy. We buy from local breweries, we don't buy Carling or Fosters, and we buy our food from local suppliers.

"February was already a bad month because of the four weekends, three Wales was under water and on a weekend you make 70% of your money. A lot of people were on their knees before this happened."

As for what the future holds, Chris, like the rest of us has no idea. But he believes it's only wise there is no date set for the big re-opening to stop Cardiff city centre becoming one big match day celebration.

Chris said: "If they were to put a specific date out there would be a consequence to that transparency, and that consequence would be death.

"It's appreciating why this is happening. The Principality Stadium is a hospital - that's a really potent image.

"We couldn't afford for the country to have one last jolly so they had to just close down and this is the same situation. If they put a date on it you'd see people on Facebook planning massive piss-ups and pub's doing re-launch parties. "

Brothers Marcus and Cain pictured last year launching Wales' first rum and gin made from bread (Image: www.adrianwhitephotography.co.uk)

Back in Carmarthenshire the popular White Hart Thatched Inn is one of the few pubs able to keeping going thanks to its distillery which runs alongside.

Run by three generations of the Coles family, they are now busier than ever creating ethanol for hand sanitiser for NHS hospitals (as well as residents who want it) after being approached by a neighbour with the idea.

They've been told the venture, run by Swansea University, could last for the next eight months - something they're grateful for as the pub remains shut for the longest time in their 26 year history.

Co-owner Marcus Coles said: "It's about 16 hours a day at the moment. It's all family, my brother and my wife and the two kids driving the forklifts. Tallulah is the youngest so she's coffee girl and makes sure we've got food. [Grandad] Geoff is in the house as he's retired but he comes and keeps and eye and checks up on us.

"We start at 4am and we normally finish at about seven or eight, it all depends on how much alcohol we've got at the end of the day.

"The work isn't too bad - it mostly just watching and keeping an eye on it. We've got our upturned barrels to sit on we've got our set-up."